On Board Water?

ill rally and do a proper write up on it. I've never really been too good at doing write ups and all that, it really is a skill to put in the time to do them as well as the actual work.

I'm going to contact my buddy Marc who i stole the set up idea from. I think he did a write up on discoweb.net after we went out and tested our installs in southern Utah.


heres the list of ingredients, $200 for everything.
As you an see, its much smaller and cleaner. You do loose the option of dialing thereat with the heater dials...but the reality is that the water only gets so hot and you an always run the heater to cool it down.



this is the under hood view. The only giveaway is the extra part (heat exchanger) between the hoses over valve cover. To the untrained eye, it looks like just another of many hoses/parts that run over the valve cover on a Disco....on my Disco, the heat exchange clamps are black powder coated. On the Tacomas it would be very easy to use a plate style heat exchanger ( much smaller and efficient approx $45) that tucks just under plastic engine dress up, completely out of sight.

 

ah ha!!!


little digging through my old overlanding forums and found this good write up. its still a lot more involved than mine....but it does have many advantages if you want to put in the time. ill either do my own write up on my simple version or see if Marc has a write up on his simple set up


http://offroadpassport.com/forum/showthread.php?t=754

 

You should tuck up the heat exchange next to the exhaust pipe close to the manifolds? I thought about an onboard water shower after seeing the oakley truck. The only problem is heating up the water. getting a pump, low flow shower head and hoses is the easy part. I also thought about a small portable propane heater. Solar heater works soo, just leave the bad in the bed exposed to the sun, and just hook is up to a pump.

 

yes, its home made, not very hard, just time consuming...but this was back when heat exchangers where a lot more ($200-300) sp making your own was a no brainer. Today, its the other way around, its a no brainer to just buy one. you can buy a much better built, 1/3 the size and 10 times more efficient one than a home made one for about $45. In fact, I'm in the mental process of buying one of these so i can make my install even more hidden with a heat exchanger thats 1/3 the size.

 

the problem with all of those ideas ( i wen through the same thought process, not trying to shoot your ideas down) is that it becomes a very inconsistent and dependent on many elements that might not be present every time (sun, engine heat from manifold often times not enough, etc) using the engines hot water from its cooling system guarantee hot water anywhere every time and it really isn't a very complicated system at all.

 

I live for months at a time out of my truck. I built a shower from a 4 gallon steel Chapin garden sprayer. I put a modified hand piece on it with a high pressure nozzle. Pour in the warm water, pump it up, and shower. The nice thing is that you can use it anywhere, not just at the front bumper of your truck. I've also used it to wash mud from the truck, and to wash my dogs. The pressure makes very efficient use of the water.

 

Werks fer me

 

West Marine has self priming pumps. Just stick the hose in your Jerry can and go. I typically only shower after the beach in summer and the water is plenty warm after hanging out all afternoon. I will have to consider this heater exchanger idea someday. Thanks for this thread.

 

A water tank will fit easily where your spare tire is now or if you dont want to remove the spare you can put a tank in the bed or just use jerry cans. A small pump like what has been shown and a shower head and your in business. I just bought this http://www.hotcampshowers.com/inc/sdetail/1257 so I have hot water.

 

I've been figuring out how I'm going to set this up on my truck and have come across a couple things I thought were worth passing.

For a water heater, I've decided to go with the Eccotemp L5 as others have done. In reading many reviews on it, it seems that the shower hose and fittings are often weak so I'm looking into other options there, particularly with a longer hose setup. Also, since it is a demand system, turning the head off creates hot zones when turning it back on. Since I'm looking at a desert system where no replacement water is available, having to squirt water on the ground (for even a couple seconds) when I re-energize the head to keep from being scalded is not an option. As such, I plan to use the heater to just warm up the entire tank then shut it down and pump straight through to the shower.

On the pump, I had decided to go with the Shurflo 2088 series. I had a question about it so I called Shurflo and they let me know they have discontinued that line of pumps. Since they are still available all over hell's half-acre, I asked if they would still stand behind the warranty if I purchased one. I was told that it depended on when the pump was manufactured as they offer a 2-year warranty from that date. Since it's virtually impossible to find out how long an online dealer has been sitting on a pump, I decided to move on.

Their replacement for the 2.8gpm 2088 is the 3gpm 4008 series. In looking at all the specs, I've decided to go with the 4008-101-E65 with a 255 series side strainer. It's a by-pass type pump so no accumulator is needed. I have my tanks ready to go and will post up pics of the system once I get everything in and have it up and running.

 

Finally got this (mostly) finished today-

Used the Shurflo 4008 pump mounted to a hunk of varnished scrap plyboard and two 15-gallon tanks. I tied the tanks together via the spigots so I can suck from one and the other will backfill to keep them at the same level. Also, with this setup I can shut off a spigot and run the hose to the back of the truck if I need water for something else. This also let's me pull one tank for re-filling if needed without having to take down the whole system.

The discharge hose is running out through the front slider and to the side of the truck where I can either run it straight to a shower head or to my Eccotemp shower. I can also run out to the shower then run the discharge straight back to a tank if I want to heat up the entire tank. When I'm out camping I'll have the rooftop tent mounted which overhangs the gap between cab and shell so I don't have to worry about rain coming through the front slider and can just leave this setup the whole time.



Close-up of the pump with the Shurflo 255 strainer attached. I wasn't able to wire it up yet as my local parts house ran out of red primary wire. I'll finish that up after my next run to town. I plan to mount a fused switch near the back of the shell so I can access it just by opening the back glass.



I attached a brass nipple and a reducing coupling to the end of the suction line to keep it at the bottom of the tank. The coupling perfectly screwed onto the pvc hose nice and tight so it's not going anywhere-



The top bolts of the board are screwed into drilled/tapped pieces of steel flat stock inside the c-channel. The bottom two are just through the board with plastic caps on the threaded end to protect the inside of the box and act as stand-offs to stabilize the board.



I even used some snazzy slotted screws just to please OZ! (actually it's all I could find, but don't tell him that).

 

Very impressive setup Bob! I like the versatility of your setup. Where did you find those 15 Gallon tanks? Also, do you have a dual battery setup?

 

Thanks! No dual batt setup so I'll be cranking up the truck to make sure I'm staying charged. I do have a spare car battery and a 20-watt folding solar panel that I may see about working into this at some point.

I picked up the tanks from a local surplus store for $30/ea (with spigot) for use in desert prospecting. I do plan to replace these at some point with some others from USP. I've ordered other stuff from them before and have had great results.

 

Now I've finally got this completely up and running.

I ran from the pump setup in the post above to a switch mounted near the back. This is so I can reach it by just opening the back door of the cap. I used adhesive strips of velcro hook around the wire loom to hold it in place (grabs like a mofo to the shell liner). And yes, I know my cap's dusty as hell inside, but that's part of the deal when living in the desert!



I put quick disconnects inline a few inches past the switch so I can pull the harness with the pump setup when not in use. I also used a lighted switch so I can see it through the window if I forget to turn it off. More velcro at the base of the switch housing even though it's wedged in pretty good between the window frame and the cap's serial # plate. The switch is a basic 12V/20A from local parts house and the housing is the wall wart from an old TI-30 AC adapter. I tore it apart and tossed the guts, then just cut a rectangular hole in the top and widened the mousehole in the back for the wires. For the younger folks in the crowd that don't know what a TI-30 is, just go ask your old man!



This is how I set up the Eccotemp heater outside. I slapped this stand together out of scrap lumber, leftover stain/varnish from an old project and a couple shelf brackets. The heater works like a champ too! A little too well in fact as I had to turn it way down to keep from getting scalded! The hose that came with the handheld was a POS so I replaced it with a longer (10') section. Most of the time the shower head will be mounted inside the changing room for my RTT with the heater set up outside.



We have shower!

 

what a great set up

 

Thanks! Now that I finally got it done, I'm jonesing bad to get up into the mountains to use it!

 

thats bad ass!!!! props sir

 

Very cool! Question for you Bob, when you activate the pump with your switch, does it pump continuously? Or does it pump until a certain PSI is reached and switch off? The reason I ask is because if your shower is off then no water would be flowing so water pressure would build to a certain point like a household garden hose usually around 50-60psi. I hope I am making sense.

 

Thanks! I have to give credit to posters above me who gave me ideas of where to start looking for this stuff as well! In particular to the OP who gave me the basic idea of having onboard water in the first place! I already had one tank with the short RV garden hose which I was using as spare water for desert runs and this just seemed to make sense. I picked up both the pump and shower unit off of scamazon.

Perfect sense. This is a regular on-demand RV pump which is designed to be powered up all the time, but only runs when the pressure drops. It's also a bypass-style pump so it doesn't need an accumulator tank in order to maintain pressure on the system. The handheld shower that comes with the Eccotemp unit has an on/off slide 'switch' on the handle so when I move it to 'on' the valve opens, the pressure drops and the pump kicks on virtually immediately, then kicks off as soon as I kill the switch on the showerhead. Here's more info on the pump itself.

 

this would be sick for surf trips...